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| "Syracuse"; painting by Vladimir Dimitrov-Maystora |
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| Kiev from my hostel |
I'm off to New York in about 30 minutes.
Thursday, August 9, 2012
Thursday, continued
I spent about 7 hours just wandering through Sofia, poking into little shops and spending a bit of time in art museums. The national gallery had an exhibit of a famous Bulgarian painter whose work I didn't like very much--lots of idealized peasant women. He did have one short period in the 1920's when he traveled to Sicily and Istanbul and got away from home. The paintings he did during that brief period were interesting.
My flight to NYC had an 18 hour layover in Kiev so I hustled in to a downtown hostel to spend the night.
Even in this brief visit it's clear that Kiev is a whole other ballgame. It's massively larger than anyplace I've been except maybe Tirana. One of the first things I saw were two guys getting ready to duke it out in front of the train station. Behind them were a row of guys selling beer out of the back of their pickup trucks. Kiev is the wild, wild West. Tolstoy Square, just down the block from the hostel, was packed with kids drinking and smoking and generally carousing.
I'm off to New York in about 30 minutes.
I'm off to New York in about 30 minutes.
Wednesday, August 8, 2012
Thursday, August 9, Kiev
I'm not sure where the time went. Suddenly it's Thursday where I am, Wednesday where you are.
I had one full day in Sofia. At this stage of my travels each Summer my energy and interest level begin to wane.
The heat weighed on me though it was ten degrees "cooler" in Sofia than Skopje (95 degrees instead of 105F). I found myself falling asleep as I walked.
Of all the places I've visited I'd say Sofia seemed to be the most "livable" city. It is modest in size and full of appealing -looking places to live, small apartment buildings over well-kept shops. There's building going on but not so much to make a big impression. As we entered Bulgaria from the east I saw a succession of small towns and cities that haven't changed much from Soviet days. Endless rows of Soviet-style apartment buildings that haven't seen a paint job since 1962. And vestigial smokestacks atop moribund factories. Even the outskirts of Sofia to the east were like that. It was only when you penetrated into the heart of the city that you began to see a different, gentler place. I've never seen so many art galleries in such a small city.
WiFi problems...I'm going to try a new post to continue this....
I had one full day in Sofia. At this stage of my travels each Summer my energy and interest level begin to wane.
The heat weighed on me though it was ten degrees "cooler" in Sofia than Skopje (95 degrees instead of 105F). I found myself falling asleep as I walked.
Of all the places I've visited I'd say Sofia seemed to be the most "livable" city. It is modest in size and full of appealing -looking places to live, small apartment buildings over well-kept shops. There's building going on but not so much to make a big impression. As we entered Bulgaria from the east I saw a succession of small towns and cities that haven't changed much from Soviet days. Endless rows of Soviet-style apartment buildings that haven't seen a paint job since 1962. And vestigial smokestacks atop moribund factories. Even the outskirts of Sofia to the east were like that. It was only when you penetrated into the heart of the city that you began to see a different, gentler place. I've never seen so many art galleries in such a small city.
WiFi problems...I'm going to try a new post to continue this....
Monday, August 6, 2012
Monday, August 6, Sofia, Bulgaria
I don't know if I can recharge my laptop in this place so I must be quick with this post.
I bussed to this hostel in downtown Sofia today. It must be one of the hippest, most signal hostels in the world. Dozens and dozens of young hipster travelers here. My dorm has about 30 beds laid out in rows on the floor of the upstairs of the building. And that's just one dorm of several. They have WiFi, tours of the city, free breakfast, cheap dinners, laundry services, etc. etc. For ten Euro's/day, about $13/day.
I get one full day in Sofia, tomorrow, then fly begin my return flight (with an 18 hour layover in Kiev).
I bussed to this hostel in downtown Sofia today. It must be one of the hippest, most signal hostels in the world. Dozens and dozens of young hipster travelers here. My dorm has about 30 beds laid out in rows on the floor of the upstairs of the building. And that's just one dorm of several. They have WiFi, tours of the city, free breakfast, cheap dinners, laundry services, etc. etc. For ten Euro's/day, about $13/day.
I get one full day in Sofia, tomorrow, then fly begin my return flight (with an 18 hour layover in Kiev).
Sunday, August 5, 2012
Sunday, August 5, Skopje
For many reasons today is a day of rest.
The enveloping and smothering cloud of heat makes it impossible to be motivated to much physical activity.
I need to write my column for San Leandro Patch.
I need to read more than I've been doing this trip.
Yesterday I got myself stranded, again. Lonely Planet touted a lake, Lake Matah, above the city that they recommended as a place to visit. They explained that you could get there cheaply (seventy cents) on the #60 bus from downtown. So after I finished a small foray into the old city in the morning I sought out the bus. The avenue that seemed correct (remember there are no street signs) was, alas, treeless. That meant standing out in the afternoon sun with temperatures above 100F, waiting for a bus that I wasn't certain would come. Then I found two blessed sycamores offering shade near a bus stop. There I ensconced myself and hoped. Buses came, buses went, all belching black smoke, with no evident air-conditioning, with numbers like #2, #24, #88, but no #60. My only solace was that there were other folks standing with me who had been there for as long as I had.
Then #60 arrived. I sprinted for the door and paid my fare to the driver. There was only one other passenger. Could it be possible that no one else wanted to take refuge at the lake on a sizzling Saturday afternoon? Perhaps I was on the wrong bus.
The bus itself seemed a parody of public transportation. The seats were clearly salvaged from old school desks. You may remember the kind, hard, made of shiny tan plastic made to look like wood. There were no advertisements on the bus walls, really nothing on this thing except the bare walls and those uninviting seats.
I sat down. We headed for the city outskirts then came to a river, which we crossed. After about 15 minutes of travel I saw a body of water to my left. Several people got off. I figured this must be the lake so I exited and walked towards the lake.
It wasn't a lake, just the river that emptied the lake. I was in the wrong place. Sullenly I returned to the main avenue and found a shady spot to wait for the next bus. And I made some friends.
First an old guy tried to talk to me. Once he realized I was a tourist he asked if I spoke German.
"Bischen Deutsch," I replied.
We then tried to converse in a language that where I knew, at best, one hundred words. All we got established was that I was from California and a teacher. After a few minutes of staring, trying to think of some way to overcome the language barrier, he drifted off.
Then some schoolkids came over. We talked a bit, mostly via hand motions. Their English vocabulary consisted of two words, "Justin Bieber". We did establish that I was headed for "Matah".
I waited. And waited. An hour passed. Someone called over a friend, from London, who told me the bus was due at 6pm, in twenty minutes. Six o'clock came and went.
Finally, after nearly 90 minutes a bus came. I jumped on along with the schoolkids. We traveled uphill for about five minutes when the bus stopped.
One schoolkid looked back at me and yelled, "No Matah".
I got off and started walking. At this point I was so hot and tired I would have descended to the level of hiring a taxi if I could find one, but none came. Three other people were walking with me, or at least in the same direction. One of the walkers, a woman, told me Matah was "far".
I trod on for about 30 minutes till I came to a gathering of folks around a rushing stream. The water was too cold for swimming but the coolness of the air was a splendid antidote to my dyspeptic mood. I kept going. The road narrowed and I found myself marching with dozens of locals towards the lake. The path was carved from out of the mountain and was somewhat scenic. But the lake, when I found it, was a bummer. Full of trash and forest refuse, small, unusable except as something to gaze into. Had I endured all the preceding to visit this dump?
I had.
The only sensible recourse now was to retreat back to Skopje, except I didn't know how to do that. There were no taxis. No bus had passed me on the way up. Had the buses stopped running? It was past 7pm now and the skies were showing their first signs of darkening.
I bought a drink and asked the proprietor about buses. She told me there was a bus at 7:30. Hallelujah, I was saved. Other folks began gathering nearby, apparently to take the same bus. I sat and waited.
The bus came, headed upstream. It passed me and, in the tight space provided, turned around. No one got on. I sensed that he would go around and pick us all up.
But he didn't. He barrelled quickly past me and was gone in a flash. All the folks who I thought were waiting for the bus, were not. I ran after the bus but he was long gone. I was bereft. I put my hands to my head and nearly burst into tears.
The thought of walking the two or three hours back to Skopje seemed impossible even for someone like me who is accustomed to these kinds of treks. It was just too hot and I was too tired. I stumbled around for a few minutes until one of the people in the group surrounding me sensed my discomfort and asked about what had happened. This woman understood enough English to get the drift of my plight.
"Let me ask our tour guide. Perhaps we can give you a lift," she said.
They were Polish tourists with their own luxury bus. Soon several of them became solicitous. Was I going to Skopje? If I was, they would give me a ride. Which they did, in their honey of a tour bus.
That's how I got home.
The enveloping and smothering cloud of heat makes it impossible to be motivated to much physical activity.
I need to write my column for San Leandro Patch.
I need to read more than I've been doing this trip.
Yesterday I got myself stranded, again. Lonely Planet touted a lake, Lake Matah, above the city that they recommended as a place to visit. They explained that you could get there cheaply (seventy cents) on the #60 bus from downtown. So after I finished a small foray into the old city in the morning I sought out the bus. The avenue that seemed correct (remember there are no street signs) was, alas, treeless. That meant standing out in the afternoon sun with temperatures above 100F, waiting for a bus that I wasn't certain would come. Then I found two blessed sycamores offering shade near a bus stop. There I ensconced myself and hoped. Buses came, buses went, all belching black smoke, with no evident air-conditioning, with numbers like #2, #24, #88, but no #60. My only solace was that there were other folks standing with me who had been there for as long as I had.
Then #60 arrived. I sprinted for the door and paid my fare to the driver. There was only one other passenger. Could it be possible that no one else wanted to take refuge at the lake on a sizzling Saturday afternoon? Perhaps I was on the wrong bus.
The bus itself seemed a parody of public transportation. The seats were clearly salvaged from old school desks. You may remember the kind, hard, made of shiny tan plastic made to look like wood. There were no advertisements on the bus walls, really nothing on this thing except the bare walls and those uninviting seats.
I sat down. We headed for the city outskirts then came to a river, which we crossed. After about 15 minutes of travel I saw a body of water to my left. Several people got off. I figured this must be the lake so I exited and walked towards the lake.
It wasn't a lake, just the river that emptied the lake. I was in the wrong place. Sullenly I returned to the main avenue and found a shady spot to wait for the next bus. And I made some friends.
First an old guy tried to talk to me. Once he realized I was a tourist he asked if I spoke German.
"Bischen Deutsch," I replied.
We then tried to converse in a language that where I knew, at best, one hundred words. All we got established was that I was from California and a teacher. After a few minutes of staring, trying to think of some way to overcome the language barrier, he drifted off.
Then some schoolkids came over. We talked a bit, mostly via hand motions. Their English vocabulary consisted of two words, "Justin Bieber". We did establish that I was headed for "Matah".
I waited. And waited. An hour passed. Someone called over a friend, from London, who told me the bus was due at 6pm, in twenty minutes. Six o'clock came and went.
Finally, after nearly 90 minutes a bus came. I jumped on along with the schoolkids. We traveled uphill for about five minutes when the bus stopped.
One schoolkid looked back at me and yelled, "No Matah".
I got off and started walking. At this point I was so hot and tired I would have descended to the level of hiring a taxi if I could find one, but none came. Three other people were walking with me, or at least in the same direction. One of the walkers, a woman, told me Matah was "far".
I trod on for about 30 minutes till I came to a gathering of folks around a rushing stream. The water was too cold for swimming but the coolness of the air was a splendid antidote to my dyspeptic mood. I kept going. The road narrowed and I found myself marching with dozens of locals towards the lake. The path was carved from out of the mountain and was somewhat scenic. But the lake, when I found it, was a bummer. Full of trash and forest refuse, small, unusable except as something to gaze into. Had I endured all the preceding to visit this dump?
I had.
The only sensible recourse now was to retreat back to Skopje, except I didn't know how to do that. There were no taxis. No bus had passed me on the way up. Had the buses stopped running? It was past 7pm now and the skies were showing their first signs of darkening.
I bought a drink and asked the proprietor about buses. She told me there was a bus at 7:30. Hallelujah, I was saved. Other folks began gathering nearby, apparently to take the same bus. I sat and waited.
The bus came, headed upstream. It passed me and, in the tight space provided, turned around. No one got on. I sensed that he would go around and pick us all up.
But he didn't. He barrelled quickly past me and was gone in a flash. All the folks who I thought were waiting for the bus, were not. I ran after the bus but he was long gone. I was bereft. I put my hands to my head and nearly burst into tears.
The thought of walking the two or three hours back to Skopje seemed impossible even for someone like me who is accustomed to these kinds of treks. It was just too hot and I was too tired. I stumbled around for a few minutes until one of the people in the group surrounding me sensed my discomfort and asked about what had happened. This woman understood enough English to get the drift of my plight.
"Let me ask our tour guide. Perhaps we can give you a lift," she said.
They were Polish tourists with their own luxury bus. Soon several of them became solicitous. Was I going to Skopje? If I was, they would give me a ride. Which they did, in their honey of a tour bus.
That's how I got home.
Sunday, August 5, Skopje
The most remarkable thing about Skopje is its monuments. They are everywhere. Monuments to past glories (Alexander the Great and his dad, Philip); monuments to religious figures; monuments to past revolutionaries (mostly unsuccessful and killed off by the Ottomans or Turks); monuments on walls (many on random buildings); monuments in city squares; monuments on quiet side streets. I'm certain that Skopje leads the world in per capita monuments.
I took photos of a sampling, but realize that this is just a tiny percentage of what I saw.
If I were to describe the Balkans in one word it would be 'unsettled'. Which might partially account for the large number of memorialized heroes here. In each country that I visited there is a museum of history, and in each museum are listed the past heroes who conquered the surrounding areas (mostly from the Ottomans) and expanded said country into a regional power. The Croats took over present day Bosnia and Montenegro and parts of Serbia. The Bosnians, at some other time, swallowed up Serbs and Macedonians and Albanians. Same for Albania and Macedonia. They've all had their times as masters of the region. And each museum contains at least one map showing that the 21st century borders of their country don't truly represent where their borders should be. Macedonia, for instance, claims ownership of a sizable chunk of Greece around Thesaloniki.
Nobody's completely happy with the status quo ante.
Whether anyone has a yen to duke it out and reclaim 'lost' territory, that I couldn't divine. That would take a longer stay and a higher level of engagement with policy makers.
But you can understand why a place like Macedonia, which has been repeatedly absorbed by its neighbors, would celebrate heroes of the past. If nothing else it at least asserts that there is a Macedonian identity, and that, at one time in the past it was a masterful identity.
Tomorrow I head for Bulgaria.
I took photos of a sampling, but realize that this is just a tiny percentage of what I saw.
If I were to describe the Balkans in one word it would be 'unsettled'. Which might partially account for the large number of memorialized heroes here. In each country that I visited there is a museum of history, and in each museum are listed the past heroes who conquered the surrounding areas (mostly from the Ottomans) and expanded said country into a regional power. The Croats took over present day Bosnia and Montenegro and parts of Serbia. The Bosnians, at some other time, swallowed up Serbs and Macedonians and Albanians. Same for Albania and Macedonia. They've all had their times as masters of the region. And each museum contains at least one map showing that the 21st century borders of their country don't truly represent where their borders should be. Macedonia, for instance, claims ownership of a sizable chunk of Greece around Thesaloniki.
Nobody's completely happy with the status quo ante.
Whether anyone has a yen to duke it out and reclaim 'lost' territory, that I couldn't divine. That would take a longer stay and a higher level of engagement with policy makers.
But you can understand why a place like Macedonia, which has been repeatedly absorbed by its neighbors, would celebrate heroes of the past. If nothing else it at least asserts that there is a Macedonian identity, and that, at one time in the past it was a masterful identity.
Tomorrow I head for Bulgaria.
Friday, August 3, 2012
Friday, August 3, Skopje, Macedonia
Thursday was a travel day. For some reason there is only one bus, at 4pm, from Tirana to Skopje, the capitals of the two respective contiguous nations. It's a comfortable bus, a nice change from the wrecks I usually ride.
We didn't get to Skopje till midnight. Luckily there was a money changing booth still open, but I still fell prey to a predatory taxi driver. I could never have found the hostel in the darkness so I felt I had no choice but to take a taxi. But I hadn't mastered the exchange rate and he pillaged me for over ten bucks for a short ride. This happens once a summer to me. (And Lonely Planet, which I read, warned not to take the taxi from the bus station, but I ignored their warning due to fatigue.)
Today was my day to get lost in Skopje, which I did. In retrospect these misadventures always have a nostalgic patina but when they are happening they are a pain in the butt. I discovered the Old City, a splendid market area where I hope to buy a gift tomorrow. But the temperature posted in the Old City was 41 degrees (106 F). I think that was artificially high due to the acres of paved streets with nary a shade tree about, but it was still damned hot. So when it took me three hours to get back to the hostel I was in bad shape.
There are few street signs in the Balkans--none in Croatia as far as I know. The ones here are in cyrillic and so almost impossible to decipher. And most of the main boulevards have no signs whatsoever. Thus the map that I dutifully carried when I left the hostel this morning did me no good at all. And without street names I quickly wandered in the wrong direction.
Tomorrow I hope to go the the big lake near here. Then Sunday I'm due to motor over to Sofia, Bulgaria, where I'll spend one full day before flying back to New York. I've enjoyed the trip but about this time I'm always ready to be done with living out of a backpack.
I know absolutely nothing of the Olympics. I hope there is some left by the time I reach the East Coast on Friday.
We didn't get to Skopje till midnight. Luckily there was a money changing booth still open, but I still fell prey to a predatory taxi driver. I could never have found the hostel in the darkness so I felt I had no choice but to take a taxi. But I hadn't mastered the exchange rate and he pillaged me for over ten bucks for a short ride. This happens once a summer to me. (And Lonely Planet, which I read, warned not to take the taxi from the bus station, but I ignored their warning due to fatigue.)
Today was my day to get lost in Skopje, which I did. In retrospect these misadventures always have a nostalgic patina but when they are happening they are a pain in the butt. I discovered the Old City, a splendid market area where I hope to buy a gift tomorrow. But the temperature posted in the Old City was 41 degrees (106 F). I think that was artificially high due to the acres of paved streets with nary a shade tree about, but it was still damned hot. So when it took me three hours to get back to the hostel I was in bad shape.
There are few street signs in the Balkans--none in Croatia as far as I know. The ones here are in cyrillic and so almost impossible to decipher. And most of the main boulevards have no signs whatsoever. Thus the map that I dutifully carried when I left the hostel this morning did me no good at all. And without street names I quickly wandered in the wrong direction.
Tomorrow I hope to go the the big lake near here. Then Sunday I'm due to motor over to Sofia, Bulgaria, where I'll spend one full day before flying back to New York. I've enjoyed the trip but about this time I'm always ready to be done with living out of a backpack.
I know absolutely nothing of the Olympics. I hope there is some left by the time I reach the East Coast on Friday.
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
Wednesday, August 1, NE Albania
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| Along a mountain trail |
From there on we spent four or five hours getting ourselves back to Tirana where I am now.
Tomorrow I head for Macedonia.
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